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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25216192">suffer the little ones</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [266]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Gothmog ruminates...never a good thing, POV Second Person, Sadism, a direct follow up to 'and yet never grows', abstract??, hope the title isn't too blasphemous</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:55:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>600</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25216192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You do what you said you would.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs) &amp; Maedhros | Maitimo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [266]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>suffer the little ones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You do what you said you would.</p><p>You pick your way through the groaning halls of Bauglir’s wallpapered shit-hole, down to the drip-drip-dripping guardhouse where a boy once lay, dreaming dark dreams, at your feet.</p><p>There’s a handful of men there, milling about. Taking their tasks as seriously as must, but no more so; because they are Bauglir’s, they are not paid enough to take pleasure in what they do. Some you recognize. Some were yours. These have a hangdog look about them, same as runaway slaves.</p><p>And ain’t they supposed to be men?</p><p>You don’t respect them in the least, but they have information. You have a bottle of Ancagalon’s best rye whiskey in your satchel.</p><p>These things can be exchanged.</p><p>In their cups, the men are more talkative. Aye, Murphy’s dead—found gutted. And no news of how or when we’ll shift in a new laborforce. Just supposed to do it ourselves, hey? Do slave’s work.</p><p>Better than whore’s work, one man says, and they toast to that.</p><p>In this way, you turn the conversation to what has brought them low.</p><p>Bad business, you say. Bad fucking business, that smithy.</p><p>Aye, you’re one to know—hey, they were yours as much as anyone’s—damnation on those ungrateful cattle, ungrateful swine—</p><p> </p><p>I’d be grateful enough for the lot, you say. If they’d only killed him when they caught him. The one who did this thing.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, didn’t you hear?</p><p> </p><p>So the news that you chew on, out in the December dark, gun at the ready lest a lion be hungry and mad enough to try you, or a bear take a liking to your borrowed horse—the news that you chew on is bittersweet.</p><p>Maedhros Feanorian, whose back bled redder than a butcher’s table under your very hand, was as good as dead when Mairon no-name dragged him home to the grinning jaws of the wolf-as-sheepfold.</p><p>
  <em>All the rest of ‘em got away. Why’d he stray?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh, there were two brats—don’t you remember the brats, sir?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Old enough to bed or break?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No, smallish.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then, no. Not unless they were underfoot. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He went back for the brats.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Mairon fancies himself a hunter. Would take a right pickle of a man <em>not</em> to find a limping cripple and two children, in a forest he knew best. That’s your opinion. But you still trace the details of it in your mind, like you’d rub gold in a coin.</p><p>Mairon brought him back. Had had his fun with him. Bauglir beat him to raw meat. Turned <em>that</em> back to Mairon, who made a martyr of him—just not a dead martyr.</p><p>
  <em>You should have heard the sounds he made, sir. Like a child.</em>
</p><p>You smiled for that, still angry in your deepest parts, that you didn’t make him scream. Didn’t break him for yourself.</p><p>That’s your flaw. Didn’t break him for yourself, didn’t think you wanted to at first.  You’ve done it before. Taken a creature others thought mad, turned it into a soldier. But that one <em>wasn’t</em> mad. Not like Feanorian’s whelp. Whether Bauglir’s sordid attentions or Mairon’s play were what turned him, the boy was cracked like an egg before he ever came to you. Trouble was, he didn’t show it like others showed it. He kept his eyes high. Kept his mind clean.</p><p>Treated himself like a gun before he even <em>made</em> a gun. Stock split; he had it splinted. Still fired a hell of a shot.</p><p>What do you do with that?</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He went back for the brats.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>What do you do with that?</p><p>You remember it.</p>
  </div></div>
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